Constant follow-up action and setting up of an effective mechanism have led to Mandya district topping the list in the State in the implementation of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM-Gramin), for the second consecutive year.
The State government has planned to provide individual toilets to 11,57,833 families throughout the State, including 54,000 in Mandya, in 2015-16. Among them, 1,90,861 families have constructed toilets and of them, 40,771 are in Mandya. While the achievement of Mandya is 75.5 per cent, Belagavi is in the last position by providing just 571 toilets (0.62 per cent) of the targeted 91,834.
According to the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, the target was 9,93,025 in 2014-15 and the achievement was 88 per cent with 8,76,919 families constructing the toilets. Of them 78,031 families were in Mandya and hence the district was in the first place last year too.
Previous years’ success had prompted the department to fix a target of 11,57,833 toilets for 2015-16. Of them, 1,90,861 families have constructed toilets by September-end, a senior official from Bengaluru told The Hindu .
Udupi is in the second place with 66.97 per cent success. Kodagu, Hassan and Shivamogga are in the next places, respectively.
Some districts in the northern parts of the State and Bengaluru Urban are lagging behind in the implementation of the mission in the current fiscal year.
As those zilla panchayats have failed to make the people conscious about the ill-effects of open defecation, the department is contemplating holding orientation programmes for the personnel there, he said.
Campaign
Meanwhile, 1,000 villages have become open-defecation free in Mandya district. The ZP is all set to felicitate gram panchayat members, motivators and others for this achievement.
IAS officer Rohini Sindhuri, the then Chief Executive Officer of the Mandya Zilla Panchayat, had launched a campaign for the implementation of the mission last year.
This campaign gained momentum and was widely accepted by the people.
